Chapter 35 #2
The man sees the struggle in my eyes. To my surprise, the roughness framing his movements melts away.
“There is more to our cause than wanting conflict,” he murmurs.
“We want change. We want to be heard. To not be squished under fine leather boots any longer.” He sighs, sounding so tired all of a sudden.
“Yet the price of freedom is blood. It will always be blood.” An earnest pause.
“I’m tired of my people being the ones bled dry. ”
The words sound so familiar…
The man reaches his hand out to me, seeming so kind—the gesture so sincere—I’m tempted to offer him my hand.
His head splits from his shoulders before our skin can ever greet one another.
A rogue sheet of ice spins toward the wall like a spiraling boomerang, cutting directly through his neck. His body drops to the ground without so much as a moment’s notice. The two women at his side go pale, their eyes bulging with the shock of how quickly their friend was just taken from them.
Suddenly, everyone standing here is reminded that we are in the midst of a battle, not a negotiation’s table. There is no talking; only fighting.
The woman with purple energy hovering around her palms brings the heels of her hands together and shoves them forward, sending a biting ripple of purple lightning in my direction.
Simultaneously, the woman who was on the man’s left spins with her broadsword in hand, a hot, bubbling slice of silver falling away from the blade and sent soaring toward me.
A metal-wielder, then.
Great.
A jolt of terror spikes my nerves as I question my ability to defend myself against both attacks.
They are strong and quick—refined and fueled with rage, which, from first-hand experience, always seems to elevate magic.
Yet before I even have a chance to pull on any magic to defend myself, a shadow panther leaps over my shoulder and swallows the lightning while a contained ice storm erupts in front of me, freezing the silver and forcing it to clank to the ground in solid form before it can reach me.
A quick scan, and I don’t see Draven anywhere near me. I don’t know how he knew to send his shadow panther for me, but…of course he knew.
He always knows. Always attempts to protect me.
When my gaze pivots in the opposite direction, I find the source of the ice magic that saved me from the molten silver.
It’s Finlay.
He watches me from a distance, confusion seeming to pinch his features, notably exposed without a mask. Yet before I have time to even consider his curious expression further, another loose magic attack lances for me from across the room.
This time it’s a beam of spiraling fire.
Having just seen Finlay and his ice, I pull without thinking. I connect to his lakt? and suck air between my teeth at the immensity of it. I feel the prickle of ice in my veins, and the sparkling substance soars free from my fingertips, stopping the fire in its tracks.
My vision throbs. My back burns as though my skin is being stretched taut. I hear whispers. They louden with each pull of my magic.
I ignore them.
A loosed arrow races toward my heart while a man with a bloodied sword races toward my neck.
Yet a figure emerges from a blinking portal, slicing his own sword through the skin of the charging man before he grips me by the shoulders and spins me around.
We tumble from the force, and my back hits the floor as the arrow hits the figure’s back.
It ricochets to the ground, bent at the tip, as though it rammed into a steel wall.
Casimir heaves heavy breaths above me, his face twisted with anger. “Of all the moments Solaya chooses to initiate a rebellion, it has to be while we are contained within it.”
My temporary shock of all that’s just happened ebbs away, snapped from its stupor by Casimir’s words. “Where you go, conflict seems to follow.” I mean it as a joke, but the tight frown pulling hard at his lips tells me it was received as fact.
He sighs, lifting himself from me and offering a hand. “We are leaving.”
I accept his hand and brush off the dust and debris from my ruined dress, glancing where Finlay had just stood only moments ago. The space is now empty. “We need to help,” I counter, reverting my attention.
“I have no desire to intervene in the reckoning finally being brought upon nobility.”
“You will when I tell you the name of the uprising.”
That makes Casimir pause. “What is the name?”
“The Restorationists.”
A gallery of emotions pass through Casimir’s expression. He seems incapable of deciding which he wants to feel. “The Restorationists?” he repeats. “Are you certain?”
I nod. “They told me themselves.”
He looks hesitant, but after a long bout of thought, he shakes his head at whatever he was considering. “This changes nothing. We are going. Now.”
I consider mentioning that I remember the group from his journal entries—pressing that I know his connection to them—but before I get the chance to say anything, he reaches for my wrist. I jerk away. “Hold on,” I protest. “I need a moment to think.”
I don’t say my echoing thought. I need a moment to decide.
“To think?” he asks, incredulous. “About what? There is nothing to think about. This is not our fight. We do not need to bleed for anyone in this room.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” The words come out faster than I can think better of it, and Casimir’s features harden.
Two members of the uprising charge at us, and with a lazy flick of his wrist, he tosses them across the room with a powerful gust of wind “Lyra.” He says my name like a warning, and nothing else.
A conceding sigh breaks from my lips as the weight of diverging choices presses against me. As I am forced to come face-to-face with a realization. An acceptance.
A resignation.
I do not belong with nobility, and I do not fully belong with the commoners, either.
I cannot be with Draven, and I cannot attend Bathara any longer.
My realm has abandoned me—has condemned me.
Wishes to imprison me for what I did at Bathara, and frankly, I can’t even fault them for it. I lost control, and people suffered.
I no longer have a place in the Three Kingdoms—not without letting Draven suffer a price I refuse to let him pay. He always protects me; now it is my turn to protect him.
The wheels in my mind turn, until it all clicks into place. A potential solution to it all.
Before I can think better of the questionable decision and make a different choice—one that is more selfish, built on optimism and dreams—I square my shoulders to Casimir, steeling my resolve. “I will only go with you on two conditions.”
He studies me, frowning. “I think you’ve forgotten the nature of our relationship.”
I huff a sardonic laugh. “Trust me, I haven’t forgotten. But I’m thinking…perhaps we could modify our dynamic?”
Casimir clasps his hands, his eyes narrowing on me. “I’m listening.”
Here we go.
“I will willingly go with you, if you promise to halt your grand plan and work with me to find a cure for your family instead. Perhaps we can cure them of their lakt?’s corruption ourselves, and there will be no need for you to destroy magic and commit unnecessary genocide against the noble houses. ”
“The magic protecting my home is dying—what of that?” he counters without thought. “Who is to say we succeed? Who is to say this realm will accept them back if we do? I will not give my family their freedoms back, only to then throw them to the gnashing teeth of poverty and the claws of hunger.”
“We can at least try, Casimir. And look around you—an uprising has already started. Perhaps things will change.”
Casimir laughs, the low sound haunted and loaded thick with something I can’t place. “When order is lost, who will be the one to find it again?”
My brows knit together. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. He rolls his shoulders back, setting me in his gaze. “I can make you return with me, you know. I do not have to concede to any of your terms to ensure you come back to my home.”
“I know,” I agree, my voice surprisingly soft. “But I don’t think you want to. I think you’re tired of forcing me to do things I don’t want to do.”
I’m betting on it, I don’t say.
His eyes remain glued to mine. “And what has given you that impression?”
“I don’t know,” I answer, telling the truth. “Yet for some reason, I still believe what I’ve said to be true all the same.”
He studies me for so long, he has to deflect two blasts of magic, send a strike of water spearing toward an archer, and defend against a burly man with a spear.
Once he has disarmed and—to my surprise—only knocked the burly man unconscious, he blows out a loaded sigh.
“Let’s say I agree to your wishes, and I redirect all my efforts to discovering a cure for the corruption in my family’s veins—will you then give my home and all its people the proper chance they deserve?
Open yourself fully to them? Accept responsibility for their futures, someday caring for and leading them as I have planned? ”
I consider his question.
Can I? Truly, without reservation, despite all that Casimir and his kind have done?